What’s a home without a chicken?
I am crazy about chickens, I have to admit – whether it’s a snow-white Leghorn, a Rhode Island Red, a Naked Neck or any mixed-breed farmyard chicken.
Even as a youngster in the city I saw myself as a farm boy. In Durban, where I grew up, I had a red hen. She roamed free and laid an egg for me every day. I faithfully closed her coop every night.
But after she was killed by a dog and the subsequent flood of tears, I decided never again. From that moment on, I’d be content with the chickens in my maternal grandfather’s yard.
This yard was on a farm in the Dwarsrivier Valley near Ladismith in the Little Karoo. We travelled there by train every December until Oupa Jan Horn, who was born in
